Abbott, Davis combine to spend $83 million in Gov. race

AUSTIN - Attorney General Greg Abbott and state Sen. Wendy Davis have combined to spend roughly $83 million to become the next Texas governor - a massive figure that underscores the contentious race but falls short of breaking a state record.

With one week until the election, Abbott and Davis disclosed a new round of spending and fundraising totals Tuesday.

Abbott, the Republican front-runner who has consistently led Davis in the polls, plowed about $46.8 million into the race so far, according to state data. Davis, on the other hand, has spent in the neighborhood of $36 million through the cycle, said spokesman Zac Petkanas.

Combined, the two candidates have drawn national attention and unloaded tens of millions of dollars to air TV ads since August in a governor's race that now amounts to one of the most expensive in state history.

But the $83 million spent, which is set to increase by several millions of dollars through Election Day, fails to touch the roughly $95 million splurge of the 2002 governor's race.

That's when Democrat Tony Sanchez mostly self-financed a $67.2 million campaign - compared to Gov. Rick Perry, who spent nearly $28 million to win by almost 20 percentage points.

'Expensive to run'

Political experts said the Abbott-Davis race had the potential to topple the 2002 total, but Abbott's consistent double-digit lead in polls most likely prevented the race from touching that record.

"Texas is a big state. It's very expensive to run," said Call Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. "If this race had ever tightened. ... and it ever appeared that Wendy Davis posed a threat, there could have been tens of millions more raised and spent."

According to state data, the Davis campaign has raised a total of roughly $37 million, when excluding millions of dollars that came in via in-kind contributions. That includes about $24 million directly, and another $13 million raked in by the Texas Victory Committee, a joint effort between Davis' campaign and Battleground Texas.

The two entities reported Tuesday that they have a combined $1 million left in the bank heading into the final week of the election, and Davis' campaign said it plans to spend every penny to continue getting its message out.

Abbott's campaign seized on the figure, blasting out a news release Tuesday with the headline: "Finance Numbers Show Sen. Davis Is Running On Empty."

Jillson, however, noted that Abbott came into the campaign with a war chest already flush with $20 million and that Davis "started from scratch."

"She has raised and spent everything she could get her hands on," he said.

Money and the lead

Meanwhile, Abbott's campaign has been spending cash at a furious pace over the last several months, dropping roughly $30 million since July 1, according to state data.

As of Tuesday, Abbott reported a whopping cash-on-hand figure of $13.3 million - a huge sum he can use if elected to scare off any Republicans that might try and challenge him in 2018.

"If I'm Abbott, I'm playing it safe," said Bryan Gervais, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "He has money and doesn't need to spend it because he has enough of a cushion in the polls."

Mark Jones a political scientist at Rice University, said Abbott spent big in the final weeks of the election because "he wants to win with an authoritative landslide."

According to state data, the biggest collective expense for the two campaigns has been TV ads: both sides have pounded viewers with tens of thousands of spots across the state for months on end.

Abbott's campaign finance filings show he's paid about $25 million for "political advertising" with CrossRoads Media, which handles TV and radio ad buys for the campaign. Abbott's campaign does not specify in the filings how the money was spent, but the bulk went to TV ads.

Meanwhile, Davis' campaign finance reports show her team has spent about $15 million on TV ad buys.

"At this point all the money has been effectively spent," Jones said. "Barring some type of late surprise, the leftover money will have a limited influence on the outcome."

In the last month alone, Abbott reported raising $4.2 million. His campaign has now raked in more than $45 million through the cycle, according to state data, tallying about 400 individual donations of more than $25,000 along the way.

His campaign called the fundraising totals a "showing of incredible support."

"As we head into the final week of the election, our campaign is humbled and grateful to have received the resources we need to elect Greg Abbott as the next governor of the Lone Star State." finance director Sarah Whitley said.

Small-donor figures

Davis' camp outpaced Abbott in the final month, raising $5.1 million in the same time period. The campaign now touts some 150,000 individual donors - a record of its own, though at least 100,000 of those donors remain anonymous under a state law that allows small donors to be kept off public campaign finance reports.

"Despite the fact Greg Abbott began this race with $20 million in his campaign bank account, Davis has remained competitive throughout the entire process by relying on the power of individuals to fuel this unparalleled effort," said Petkanas, the Davis spokesman.

But Jillson, the political scientist from SMU, said Texas has always been a place where politicians win by squeezing big donors for cash.

"While it is exciting to see the little people rise up and write their checks," he said, "they're not about to take over the state of Texas."